The lesson for Democrats from Alabama is simple: Stop trying to lure Republicans and focus on turning out the base

The question hovering over the Alabama U.S. Senate election, at least for the pundits, was simple: Would Alabama Republicans rather vote for a child molester or a Democrat? The answer was sadly predictable: Even though the allegations against Republican Roy Moore -- that he had pursued or molested teen girls when he was in his 30s -- were entirely credible, white conservative voters still picked Moore over the KKK-fighting Democrat Doug Jones.

In the end, however, in a true miracle that concludes a bizarre year in American politics, Jones won the Alabama race in a squeaker. (At this writing, his margin over Moore is barely over 10,000 votes.) In the end, Jones' unexpected victory came because Democrats -- depressed after many years of never winning statewide elections in Alabama -- were fired up to vote, and turned out in big numbers sufficient to drown out the hard right.

As Nate Cohn of the New York Times tweeted, the Alabama result was the direct result of the turnout gap closing:

Link to tweet

The lesson here for Democrats is simple: Stop trying to win over Republican voters. Instead, turn out the Democratic base. Indeed, the lesson of Alabama, which Democrats should carry with them into the 2018 elections, is to focus on motivating the base. This was true in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost largely because black turnout was down in several key states. It proved true in Alabama, where Jones was able to win the reddest of red states because black voter turnout was incredibly high, despite extensive Republican attempts at voter suppression in the state. Some of this was due to the high profile of the race, but a lot of it was due to aggressive efforts to get out the black vote in the state.

Clinton's biggest mistake in 2016 was believing she could use Donald Trump's obvious piggishness to chip off white female voters who usually vote Republican. It didn't work. The white conservative woman who has had enough of men's nonsense is a nice fantasy, but the reality is that such women are both too motivated by racial politics and too loyal to the men in their lives to break free. Jones' victory shows a different path forward. The focus on turning out the liberal base, and black voters in particular, paid off with a Democratic victory almost no one believed would happen.